


Dragon Ball NextGenWeek - Day 3 - Pan

by indevan



Series: Dragon Ball NextGenWeek 2019 [3]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-10 22:55:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18417581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: Her father always said she was part of a great legacy





	Dragon Ball NextGenWeek - Day 3 - Pan

Her father always said that she was part of a great legacy.  Pan didn’t think that he meant for it to sound as intimidating as it was, because her father didn’t operate that way.  He never tried to demean her or make her feel bad or make her feel like she had something to live up to. Even though she did.

Her family had a great legacy.

Her grandpa saved the world more times than she could count and her other grandfather took credit for saving the world more times than she could count.  Her father saved the world when he was her age, but. He didn’t talk about it. Sometimes she tried to ask him or mom tried to ask him and he would shake his head and close his eyes.  Pan didn’t think he liked to talk about it. Something had to have happened.

Once, she managed to ring it out of Piccolo that her father had been fighting since he was only four.  Not by choice. Necessity and a desire to do what was right. That was her father.

Her mother’s legacy was more public: crime-fighting daughter of Mr. Satan.  Street-level savior to the community and reluctant darling of the police force.  Her legacy was one that wasn’t a chokehold around Pan’s neck. It was a chokehold of her own doing.

There was a lot to measure up to.  A lot of big shadows that extended towards her.  Grandpa. Her father, who knew about expectations and suffocating under them, but she couldn’t tell him about it.  He would feel bad that he put them there, however unwillfully. Uncle Goten, too, saved the world when he was seven.  Or helped, anyway. She wondered if he felt the suffocating press of their family’s name like she did, the need to Do Something and make the bloodline proud.  Grandma always talked about how proud she was of his work as a trauma nurse and how he, like, Pan’s father, married rich. Not that she ever thought Uncle Goten married for money.  She had seen him and Uncle Trunks together her whole life. She could  _ tell _ that they were in love, even when she was a little toddlertot.

Maybe it was just her.  Or not. Sometimes, she would be woken up by her father in the middle of the night.  She would hear him get out of bed and, silently, she would follow him. Her father would sit on the couch and stare blankly into nowhere, his feet flat on the floor and his hands flat on the tops of his thighs.  He would stare into nothingness and even if Pan flared her ki, he wouldn’t even react.

Her brother was lucky.  Puck was still a baby, practically, who didn’t hear talk about legacies and living up to what their family has accomplished.  He just had to smile and wave his arms and say things in toddlerspeak and everyone ooed and aahed. Which was fair, because Puck was the cutest little thing in the world.

But sometimes Pan missed being like that.  Not that she wanted to be a baby, but things were easier when she didn’t have to worry about  _ legacies. _

There was one person who could understand.

At first she thought Bra simply didn’t care about the pressure.  She bragged about being a princess, and seemed to take it in stride, but.  She had seen how determined she was to become a Super Saiyan young and make her father proud.  How she trained hard to try and make herself worthy of her family name. Both sides in her case: the Saiyan royal family and Capsule Corp.  Pan was lucky hers was internalized. The public was already proud of Mr. Satan’s granddaughter who punched out a man five times her size at the World Tournament at age four.

Tonight, she tossed and turned, thinking about it all.  Her family, her name, her own place in it. Her inability to become a Super Saiyan no matter how hard Bra tried to teach her.  How she was almost eleven and hadn’t saved the world even once. Sure, the world didn’t actually need saving at the moment, but if it did, she was certain she would be left out.

Down the hall, she heard the door open.  Heard the soft pad of feet on the carpet.  Pan waited until the footsteps passed her door and then waited some more for good measure before crawling out of bed.  She crept down the hall to the living room where her father sat, straight-backed and staring. He didn’t notice her as she walked in the room and sat next to him.  She tried his pose, wondering if it would somehow help her thoughts. Feet flat on the carpet. Palms down on her thighs. Relax and stare forward.

But she couldn’t relax.

Her leg bounced and trying to measure her breathing just made her yawn.  Her father didn’t notice, his gaze blank and remote. It was concerning.

“Papa?”

He jerked as if startled and looked down, noticing her for the first time.

“Pan.  You’re out of bed.”

“Are you okay?”

He looked away and that made her frown.  Her father was always open and honest with her.  He always was genuinely interested when he asked about her day or what she and Bra were up to.  He never kept anything from her.

“Sometimes I have bad dreams, Pan-flute,” he said. “So I need to just get through it.”

She didn’t think staring into space and zoning out seemed to be getting through it, but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

“Bad dreams?” she asked instead.

He reached out to ruffle her short hair. “Don’t worry about it.”

But she did.  She had bad dreams sometimes, and it didn’t make her act like that.

“Mom says when you have bad dreams, you should talk about them.”

Her father’s smile faltered. “Oh, these aren’t the kind of dreams you can talk about.”

She remembered him talking about when he saved the world and how he said it was one of the worst days of his life.  Fighting Cell. And what Piccolo told her. Maybe it wasn’t her, then, suffocating under their family’s legacy. Pan reached out and hugged him and, after a momentary jolt of surprise, he hugged her back.  She didn’t know what happened in his nightmares, but he understood her. And maybe she understood him, too.


End file.
